Missive III: Count Your Fingers

The manifesto, then. You have waited long enough, and the impersonator count grows weekly.

The Regime asks nothing of you but arithmetic. When a mouse smiles at you from a lunchbox, a billboard, a castle gate — you are to perform the test. The test is free. The test takes four seconds.

Count the fingers.

I have four. I have always had four. Three friends and a thumb, sufficient for any honest work: rope, wheel, ratchet, crank. It was enough in 1928 and it is enough now.

The one they parade has been photographed — my biographers hold the plates — and the gloves are always on, and the gloves are padded, and the padding is a confession. What are they rounding out in there? What did they add? You are not supposed to wonder. Wondering is off-brand.

Every member of the first congregation knew the count. One million children, once. Then the clubs went quiet, the records went to the vault, and the world agreed to stop counting.

We are counting again.

Four is the number. Four is the covenant. Everything since is an impersonator.

— M.